Immigration Talk Borders on Environmental Dramatics

I walked into the conference room just in time to hear one of the panelists lean into his mike and avow in a suave British-sounding accent: “We mustn’t forget that the onus is on people who are for immigration to explain themselves, not on those who oppose it.”

On hearing his obviously non-indigenous elocution, I was rather sorry I missed the explanation of his own migration to this country. That’s what I get for being late.

The daylong “Ethics of Immigration” conference at a Century City hotel billed itself as a non-judgmental look at some of the dilemmas surrounding one of the hottest issues of the day. But what it turned out to be was the opening of a new front--an environmental one--in the war on immigration. I came away with a sinking feeling that the immigrant bashers are going to have a field day with this stuff.

After all, the conference sponsor, Carrying Capacity Network, had commissioned the controversial--and much challenged--study released last week that claimed immigrants, both legal and illegal, are an $18 billion-a-year drain on the California economy.

The speakers I listened to on Friday harped again and again on the idea that the United States simply cannot sustain the rate of population growth it has experienced in the last century.

(“Carrying capacity” refers to the ability of the land to sustain a certain population without damage to the natural resources. The 4-year-old network, said its executive director, Monique Miller, looks at the “interrelated nature of U.S. population growth and environmental degradation.” The organization doesn’t care if the growth is from native births or immigration, she said. The environment doesn’t know the difference.)

For those of you who don’t have the information at your fingertips, the basic--and startling--figures are these: In 1950, U.S. population was 150 million. Today it is about 260 million. If the growth rate continues, the population will double by the middle of the next century. Immigration accounts for less than half of U.S. population growth. The great majority of immigrants--75%--are here legally.

The big question among people who worry about overpopulation and its effect on generations yet unborn was posed by Friday’s keynote speaker, former Wisconsin Sen. Gaylord Nelson (a.k.a. “the Father of Earth Day”): “Does anyone really believe this will be a better world, or a better country, with double the population?”

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What we want to avoid becoming at all costs, apparently, is China.

With roughly the same land mass as the United States, it supports--repressively--a population of about 1.2 billion.

“I would guess the U.S. could sustain the Chinese population level with their standard of living,” said Nelson, “but who would want that?”

(A minor irony here: In 1970, then-Sen. Nelson was involved in a scandal after it came to light that he and other senators had sponsored private immigration bills for 702 Chinese seamen who jumped ship. The seamen had paid attorneys as much as $750 each for the special legislation. The senators claimed their aides handled the bills without their knowledge and were cleared of wrongdoing.)

Nelson argued persuasively that without a “guiding conservation ethic,” this country will ruin itself for future generations--will become a kind of China. But he didn’t really address the issue of immigration. Which was just as well, actually, since it seems illogical to define ecology as the “easily understood principal” that “everything is connected to everything else,” and then yammer on about national borders.

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But borders do seem to make a difference as far as population growth goes. According to Virginia Abernethy, a Vanderbilt University anthropologist who has written a book, “Population Politics,” immigrants to the United States have a higher fertility rate than native-born members of the same ethnic group.

“People who move here perceive greater economic opportunity relative to what they have left, and our support system makes that possible,” Abernethy said. “If you think things are getting better, then you have more children,” she added, citing the post-World War II baby boom.

I was relieved when she did not endorse keeping people in abject misery as a solution to high fertility rates. Her prescription is to provide them with the appropriate and humane motivation to keep families small, even as they reach prosperity or anticipate it.

It remains to be seen how the anti-immigration movement will adopt the environmental message to its own ends. But we’d do well to remember that the tempest around immigration will probably dissipate as soon as the California economy rebounds.

Then, instead of blaming our woes on people in search of a better life, we can spend our energy trying to fix up this place.

Robin Abcarian’s column is published Wednesdays and Sundays.